Barry's Amusements

7th July 2013

We arrived at Barry's Amusements about thirty minutes after opening, following a very pleasant morning at the nearby Giant's Causeway. The place was as crowded as I've seen it, but despite that the various rides all had no more than a one cycle wait. Our first stop was at Barry's Big Dipper, described in the park brochure as follows:

Nothing compares to the thrill of a rollercoaster ride and we have one of the best. Designed and built in Italy, the Looping Star, will slowly take you on one of the best views of the Causeway Coast, not that you have much time to enjoy it though as the track turns and you are thrust earthward. We dare you not to hold on as the carriages corner with G-forces similar to a F-1 racing car.

Opinions on different roller coasters are entirely subjective, so it is actually possible that the person responsible for the park brochure (and punctuation) genuinely believed that a Pinfari ZL42 could be considered one of the best. From the perspective of this enthusiast, however, the major coaster at Barry's is a ride that is best described as a credit, and not one that I've any need to repeat in the future.

Megan needed the credit on the Speedy Mouse, so we rode that quickly before moving indoors for the Experience, the Ghost Train, and the Cyclone. Our last stop was the Jumping Astro, a ten seat tower ride added to the park last year. This was quite a lot better than expected, with a strong feeling of weightlessness on every drop.

Bundoran Adventure Park

7th July 2013

It was interesting to return to Bundoran Adventure Park twelve months after my previous visit. Many of the rides were as I remembered them, including the Wacky Worm, but there were also a two new additions; a flat ride named Demon Chase and an impressive looking smile-making teeth-gritting heart-pounding screamtastic ghost train. One hopes that the artist responsible for the missing apostrophe on Demon's Revenge was suitably re-educated.

I've commented more than once about fairground ghost rides where a lacklustre interior fails to live up to the impressive exterior. Be that as it may, the owners of this ride deserve a special medal for their audacity, as there was no interior to speak of; there was just a single skeleton and some words on the wall which the car passed too quickly to read. I've had significantly more frightening train rides on Irish Rail, memorably a trip to cork when the staff forgot to turn the lights on, plunging us into total darkness for several minutes in a lengthy tunnel.